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Shinkai wrote on his website that this is the first time he is making a "love" story. He added that there were words long before there were characters to write them in this world. The Japanese language during the era when it had no written form is known as "Yamato kotoba." The language during this time had its own pronunciations, before the importation of kanji characters from China.

At the time, "love" was written as "lonely sadness" (koi). Moreover, according to Shinkai, the modern concept of "love" (ai) was imported from the West. While his new Kotonoha no Niwa film is set in the modern era, it will be about "koi" in the original "lonely sadness" meaning — of longing for someone in solitude, as opposed to the modern meaning.

Already a must watch, as every Shinkai movie is. Glad he's going back to his roots. Love stories are probably what he's best at. However, if he doesn't consider his previous works to be "love" stories in the same sense (lonely sadness), then that means this movie is going to be really depressing, isn't it?

For whatever it's worth last June I attended a Q&A with shinkai and someone asked what he was working on,he mentioned that his next work would be in a way back to his roots because it'd be about a "couple and the distance between them" but that the "distance" wasn't something physical but something else.

He also mentioned the he plans on someday doing a movie where people to end up together,wouldn't say if it'd be this one though

Makoto Shinkai back to his forte after the ghibli experiment. I've no doubt this will turn out decently, but at the same time I wanted to see him continue to experiment with other genres outside his comfort zone.